The Spider and the Butterfly
by AMillionMilesAway612
Summary: Clare Edwards was a butterfly. Bianca DeSousa was a spider. They were divided by a river called Reality. But what happens when the butterfly and the spider attempt to build a bridge across this perpetual river? One-shot


**Hola fellow fanfictioners! I hope you are all having wonderful summers filled with sunny days, warm pools, and of course, ice cream. I have always had this fascination with Bianca DeSousa, but could never come up with any story ideas with her because I am always in Clare mode. But the other day, I woke up and had the line "Clare Edwards was a butterfly and Bianca DeSousa was a spider" stuck in my head and it would not go away! So eventually I came to the conclusion that it may be my brains way of telling me to sit down and write a story. So that's what I did! This story is a little different from my normal stuff, and to be honest it is a bit weird, so if you're not into weirdness...**

**What am I saying? This is fanfiction! We're all weird! **

**With no further adiue, here is my very random Clare/Bianca one-shot that I actually really love!**

**Disclaimer- I do not own Degrassi. I like to pretend I do, but I don't. I'm a sad person.**

Clare Edwards was a butterfly. She was tender, and pretty, and the kind of creature everyone treated like glass. She was admired at and searched for and thought of and dreamed about and never had to do anything for this attention except look at someone with those immaculate blue eyes of hers. She was the kind of girl who stole people's hearts and cradled them in her hands, feeding them and nurturing them until they acquired the strength to crack out of their cocoons and flutter away. She was innocent. She was pure. Clare Edwards was a butterfly.

Bianca DeSousa was a spider. She was mysterious, and exotic, and the kind of creature everyone wanted to avoid. She was condemned and ignored and shunned and stepped on and didn't have to do anything for this attention except try her best. She was the kind of girl that wanted someone to steal her heart and cradle it in their hands, feed it and nurturer it until it acquires the strength to begin constructing a cocoon. She was promiscuous. She was corrupt. Bianca DeSousa was a spider.

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, a land in which the butterflies and the spiders were divided by a perpetual river called Reality, a magical bridge was constructed. And although this bridge was feeble and narrow, it still had the strength to hold one butterfly and one spider. All they had to do was hold hands.

Clare Edwards, the butterfly, is having a bad day. Jenna had failed to notice a significant spelling error in the title of the school newspaper's front story. Apparently, the Degrassi hockey team is now the Degrassi hooky team. Besides that humiliation, Clare forgot all about her Spanish presentation today and went up to the podium with clammy hands, stuttering and stammering through a heap of words that were not, in any shape or form, proper Spanish. During lunch, Owen Milligan was horse playing with the football team when he bumped into Clare while holding a hot bowl of soup, spilling the chicken noodle contents all over her freshly washed polo shirt. He didn't even have the decency to apologize.

Needless to say, Clare is not in the mood to take crap from anyone.

Clare hears a sob-like sound emerge from behind her as she walks to the bathroom with a napkin pressed against her stained chest. Turning around to identify the source, she is suddenly trampled by a sprinting Bianca DeSousa, who is frantically covering her mouth as if she is about to vomit. Clare's body spills to the floor in one fluid motion and a sharp pain stabs at her side.

"What the heck was that?" Clare yells to the running girl, but her voice is drained out by the sound of the bathroom door slamming shut. She stands up and gently presses her hand against her side. Nothing seems to be severely injured.

Had it been any other day, Clare would have merely rolled her eyes at the insincerity of others and gone to a different bathroom. But since it has been such a terrible, atrocious morning, Clare is not going to just let it be. She is going to give Bianca DeSousa a piece of her mind.

Being angry, or rather, acting on being angry, is a very foreign concept to the placid Clare Edwards. All her life, the motto has always been "an eye for eye keeps the whole world blind". Fighting was a definite no, a delinquency, a sin.

But for some anonymous reason, Clare finds pleasure in this anger. The adrenaline rushing through her veins reminds her of being a little kid rolling down a rapid water slide. It gives her a sense of power, a sense of strength that she never knew was in her possession at all. Albeit what Bianca had done really wasn't as much of a crime as it was an annoyance, curiosity kills the Clare as she marches over towards the bathroom door. What is this burst of fury going to result in?

The butterfly can't wait to find out.

"Excuse me!" Clare trudges into the girls' bathroom. She makes sure her steps are excessively heavy to emphasize her rage. "But do you mind telling me how knocking me down in the hallway revitalized your life in any way?"

Bianca has her hands pushed against the countertop of the sinks, her head ducked in against her chin so that Clare can't make out her face through the mirror. Her body is quivering in a way that makes her resemble Clare's pencil trying to balance on the edge of her desk right before it fell over.

"Not that I even know what you mean, but I didn't purposely try to make you fall if that's what you're wondering," her voice is distorted, and at first Clare thinks she's holding her nose at something. It takes her a few moments to come to the shocking conclusion that the stone hard Bianca DeSousa is _leaking_.

Clare involuntarily swallows. Not only is she supposed to be angry, but now she is supposed to be angry with a _leaking_ Bianca DeSousa.

"It's not the fact that you knocked me down that pisses me off so much," she tries to keep her voice level with rage, but it falters towards the end, "it's the fact that you never stopped to see if I was okay. Don't you think that was a bit rude of you?"

Bianca barks a laugh at Clare's comment. "Hate to break it to you, but the world is a rude place. Get used to it."

If Bianca's intention is to stun Clare to silence, she succeeded. Fortunately, the stunning lasts only for a brief moment before Clare collects her thoughts and straightens her posture. "That still doesn't give you the right to act like that. I've had a really bad day and you only-"

Again, Bianca laughs. This time she turns to Clare, and even though she is laughing her eyes are cold. They are the eyes of Clare's father to her mother right before he walked out the front door that first fight. Clare averts her eyes to avoid the memory. Her neck was never truly released from the strangling grip it had over her.

"Are you kidding me? _You _had a bad day? You?" Bianca points an accusing finger at Clare, as though she had been caught red-handed taking condoms from the dispenser. "What happened, sweetheart? Did a boy put his hands on the no-no place? Did your skirt rise above your knees while walking in the hallway? Did you only get an A- on a test?"

Clare can't help but blush a deep shade of red. She received a 91 on her calculus exam this morning and was disappointed in herself. Only now does she see how trivial her dissatisfaction really was.

Bianca never skips a beat. "Grow up, Saint Clare. Your bad day is probably the best damn day of my life, _if_ that. Your whole world is a marshmallow. A perfect, flawless marshmallow."

This sends shivers of hatred down Clare's spine. How could Bianca ever know anything about Clare's life? How could she even begin to try and comprehend what does and doesn't happen in the Edwards household? If one thing infuriates Clare more than rudeness, it's ignorance. And Bianca seems to be the poster girl for ignorance.

"My life is _not_ a marshmallow," Clare growls through gritted teeth, "And if you honestly think that then you are either blind or just stupid."

A devious smile makes its way onto Bianca's face. She's enjoying making little Clare Edwards boil. "Well, I can see that giant stain on your left boob so obviously I'm not blind. And maybe I am stupid, but at least I'm not spoiled."

"I'm not spoiled."

"Yes, you are," Bianca begins twirling a thick strand of brunette hair around her finger, but grows bored of the habit after a few seconds. "You don't even know how good you have it. Your life is perfect. I bet your parents run the church hand in hand, don't they?"

"You don't know me, Bianca, so shut your mouth," The satisfaction Clare felt from her anger before is long gone. Now all she feels is rough, raw fury. It claws at her skin, and the only relief she can find from it is to let it take over her.

"And maybe your life is so damn terrible not because you're unlucky, but because you just don't have the decency to at least try. You get what you deserve. Have you ever thought that you don't deserve any better?"

"SHUT UP!"

One moment, Bianca is standing six feet away from Clare.

The next moment, Bianca is pressed up against Clare, and Clare is pressed up against the wall, and the two girls stare at each other for a long, long time. And even though their positions suggest anger and violence, neither of them take any steps to initiate a fight. Clare merely gazes at Bianca's lips, noticing how chapped and pale they are, and wonders how they got that way. She isn't attracted to Bianca in any way; she just needs to look at anything, anything at all, except those goddamn eyes. Because in this moment, Bianca's eyes possess a new identity. She is no longer the hardcore, promiscuous, notorious badass who steals boyfriends and does drugs; she is a little girl lost in a sea of strangers, searching for a familiar face, or even a friendly face, to guide her home. And for once in her life, the butterfly sees the spider not as eight flimsy legs that get in your way, but as an innocent creature crawling along the earth looking desperately for a place to make its web.

"I try," It's not a comment, Clare notices. It's a plea. "I try and I try and I try. And do you know where trying gets me?"

"Where?" Even though it's a rhetorical question, Clare feels as though she is losing her voice and must speak in order to retrieve it.

Bianca bites her lip. So that's how it got so chapped. "Here, in this disgusting bathroom, about to beat the shit out of Saint Clare." She steps back from Clare, tries to take a deep breath, and presses her hands against her knees. Does she have asthma, Clare wonderes, cautiously watching the older girl struggling to breathe again.

"I don't want to be here," Bianca cries behind gasps, "I don't want to be in this filthy bathroom with you. I don't want to be in this school, or in my house, or in this town, or in this country."

"Then where do you want to be? Where else is there to be?"

All the color drains from Bianca's face. Her eyes go black. Her body stiffens. Her breathing stops altogether. And Clare begins to understand that this is the question that has been haunting her for a long time, the question that she did absolutely everything to avoid.

And it's all Clare's fault she has to face it.

"I guess…..dead."

The word is a parasite. It rushes around the room, and both Clare and Bianca can do nothing but watch it fly by. Eventually, it breaks in two, does a little dance, and darts towards each of them. The parasites cut through the barrier of their skin, the wall of their bones, the boarder of their hearts, and enters that empty little spot inside of everyone that no one wants so acknowledge. It settles there for a few seconds before cloning itself- two, four, eight, sixteen- and in no time there are million little "deads" filling up that empty space inside each of them. It hurts Clare, and numbs Bianca, and neither of them can feel anything else but its presence.

"Dead." Clare says the word for the same reason a child pushes a sore tooth. Just to see if the pain is still there. But the word doesn't hold the same effect when she says it. Maybe because it's just a faraway fantasy to Clare; not at all the terrifying reality it is for Bianca.

A thread of silence glides between the two. It's not awkward, but it's painful, and both Clare and Bianca are terrified to cut it.

Clare eventually musters up the courage to speak again.

"You can't die, Bianca."

"And why not?"

"Because," Clare struggles to form coherent thoughts, "Because you're in high school. Because you have your whole life ahead of you to live for."

Bianca sits down underneath the counter. Clare joins her, but keeps a solid foot between them. "I don't have _anything_ to live for. Drew hates me, my aunt hates me, my grades suck, my parents are gone, I have no friends, and no money, and no pride. So what do I have left?

This time, Clare doesn't even have to blink before answering.

"You."

"Me?" Bianca laughs for the third time today, but this time it's weak and desperate. "I'm not worth anything," She looks down at her hands like they possess some answers to the questions that have been killing her all her life, "I'm not worth anything at all. Believe me, I'm better off dead."

"Listen, Bianca, besides the rumors and things people write on the bathroom stall doors, I don't know anything about you. So I'm not going to give you this long speech about how precious your life is. But a few years ago my sister tried to kill herself."

This news shocks Bianca. She looks at Clare through glassy eyes, suddenly interested in what she has to say. "Really?"

Clare nods solemnly. The memory is only bitter, not sweet. "Yeah. And it was really scary. She wasn't my sister anymore, you know? She was just this porcelain doll that we all had to handle with excessive care. 'Always be happy around Darcy, always smile, never talk about rape or anything that could trigger her'. My entire life was devoted to tiptoeing around her. I grew so tired of it. And for one second, one terrible, ugly second…." Clare braces herself for what she is about to say. She has never told anyone, not Adam, not Eli, not her mom, not even her diary, this vicious, hideous truth.

"I wanted her to be dead."

"Holy shit, Clare." Bianca gasps, dumbfounded. "That's really sick."

"I know, and I never forgave myself. I was mad at her for changing everything and I didn't know what to think. It was a horrible thing to feel." A single tear dances down the skin of Clare's soft cheek, but she decides not to wipe it away.

"When I was little my dad called me his butterfly because I was always running around and causing people joy. He said butterflies are good creatures that are innocent and pure. I was so proud. And whenever I would do something bad, he would ask me if I was really a butterfly, or if I was a spider. I would start to cry and say that I would be a butterfly from now on. I didn't want to be an evil spider.

"And when I wished my own sister dead, I declared myself a spider for all of time. Butterflies don't wish their flesh and blood dead. I was a horrible person. But one day, when I was in my house with Eli, there was a spider on the wall. I told him to go kill it. He refused."

"Why?"

"He told me that spiders are misinterpreted. They are seen as bad but they're demeanor is incorrect. Eli said that spiders do a lot of good, too. They kill mosquitos and other bugs that do real damage. They also take a lot of pride in the webs they build and it would be a crime to leave a home like that ownerless."

Bianca shakes her head. Butterflies, spiders….all this arthropod talk is giving her goose bumps, not to mention a killer headache. "I don't get it, why are you telling me this?"

"Because, Bianca, you are a spider. People look down on you and think you're bad. I won't lie to you about that. But the truth is, you are a good person. And even though other people can't see that doesn't mean it can't exist. I may be a 'butterfly', but I'm not innocent and pure all the time. I mess up and can be selfish and wrong. Besides, butterflies and spiders have one very important thing in common."

"What is that?"

"When they need food, they kill."

The bell for fifth period rings. Clare pushes herself up from the floor, dusts off her legs, and washes her hands. Bianca, however, cannot find the strength to move. Her body is glued to the floor, glued down by the power of Clare Edward's words. She's never experienced an epiphany before, but if she were to have one, this is probably what it feels like.

Clare looks down at Bianca and offers her still wet hand out to her. Bianca is drawn to it like a magnet, not minding the feeling of her own skin growing damp.

An electronic wave passes between each of their fingers when they touch. It's not the formation of a relationship or a friendship; it is merely the internal singings of an internal contract they have both internally written. And in this contract, hidden in the empty spaces of their bodies, now that the parasites are gone, both girls have agreed to stop trying to be butterflies and spiders and just be people. Because even though butterflies are beautiful and graceful and happy, they do not wish their own flesh and blood dead because they don't have the ability to. And even though spiders may have a negative demeanor of being dirty and worthless, they do not argue that those accusations aren't true because they don't have the ability to.

Clare and Bianca both have the ability to do a lot of things. Clare has the ability to forgive and forget, and Bianca has the ability to possess a new identity in those eyes of hers. All they have to do is try.

Both their lives changed in the few minutes they shared in the first floor bathroom of Degrassi High. Maybe these changes won't start right away, or tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. But the earth began as one giant mass and it took almost 6 billion years to get where it is now. Clare and Bianca may not have 6 billion years, but that doesn't mean their time is up yet.

They give each other a curt nod before parting ways. Clare leaves the bathroom first, and as she walks away from the former spider, she begins to realize that sometimes things do happen for a reason. There must have been a reason they both went to the bathroom at the same time. There must have been a reason Clare chose to let her anger get the better of her. There must have been a reason no one else interrupted them for those few minutes. Bianca was a little girl lost in a sea of strangers. And although Clare wasn't a familiar face, she eventually became that one friendly face necessary to guide Bianca home.

It's a bitter sweet moment when Clare comes to the realization that she will most likely never talk to Bianca DeSousa again. They will never be friends, and Bianca will be graduating this year, heading off on her own free will to find where she wants to be. But that's okay. Clare has friends. Bianca will find friends. Everything will come together eventually.

Clare Edwards was pure and innocent and tender and pretty, but she made mistakes and thought some terrible things to some not-so-terrible people.

Bianca DeSousa was mysterious and exotic and promiscuous and corrupt, but underneath all those layers of bad she was a good person who was just scared by all those unfriendly faces glaring down at her.

The butterfly and the spider returned to their sides of the river that day, and they didn't plan to return to the magical bridge ever again. All that mattered was the fact that they constructed this magical bridge, and it had the strength to hold one butterfly and one spider. Maybe they would be the only creatures with the courage to step on it. Maybe it would break after a period of time, never to be heard of again. But to the two girls, it didn't matter. They had defied the odds, gone against what's supposed to be, and saved each other from their own identities.

Reality had strong currents and powerful waves that threatened anyone attempting to cross it, but the butterfly and the spider somehow managed to dodge its assaults and return home safely.

All they had to do was hold hands.


End file.
